Featured Artist at the e.Gallery: Akseli Valdemar Gallen-Kallela


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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Symbolist movement, Akseli Valdemar Gallen-Kallela [Finnish, 1865-1931] Link: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Gallen-Kallela_Akseli_Valdemar

Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931), was a Finnish painter, graphic artist, designer, and architect, his country’s most famous artist and a major figure in the Art Nouveau and Symbolist movements. He was born in Pori and studied in Helsinki and then in Paris (1884–9, notably at the Académie Julian). In 1894 he settled at Ruovesi in central Finland, where he designed his own home and studio (1894–5) in a romantic vernacular style, together with its furnishings. He traveled widely, however, and was well-known outside his own country, particularly in Germany (he had a joint exhibition with Munch in Berlin in 1895 and exhibited with Die Brücke in Dresden in 1910). In 1911–13 he built a new home and studio for himself at Tarvaspää near Helsinki (now a museum dedicated to him). Gallen-Kallela was deeply patriotic (he volunteered to fight in the War of Independence against Russia in 1918, even though he was in his 50s) and he was inspired mainly by the landscape and folklore of his country, above all by the Finnish national epic Kalevala (‘Land of Heroes’).


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Lake Keitele

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Lemminkäinen’s Mother

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Kullervo cursing

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Autumn. Fresco in the tomb of Juselius (Pori).

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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery: Constantin Brâncuși


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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist, Constantin Brâncuși [Romanian, 1876-1957] Link: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Brancusi_Constantin

Constantin Brâncuși; surname sometimes spelled Brâncuș; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His abstract style emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Famous Brâncuși works include the Sleeping Muse (1908), The Kiss (1908), Prometheus (1911), Mademoiselle Pogany (1913), The Newborn (1915), Bird in Space(1919) and The Column of the Infinite (Coloana infinitului), popularly known as The Endless Column (1938). Considered the pioneer of modernism, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture.


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The First Cry

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The Kiss (1907)

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The Kiss (1912)

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Madame L.R.

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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery: Elizabeth Murray


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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist, Elizabeth Murray [American, 1940-] Link: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Murray_Elizabeth

Elizabeth Murray was born in Chicago in 1940. She earned a BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California. A pioneer in painting, Murray’s distinctively shaped canvases break with the art-historical tradition of illusionistic space in two-dimensions. Jutting out from the wall and sculptural in form, Murray’s paintings and watercolors playfully blur the line between the painting as an object and the painting as a space for depicting objects. Her still lifes are reminiscent of paintings by masters such as Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse; however, like Murray’s entire body of work, her paintings rejuvenate old art forms. Breathing life into domestic subject matter, Murray’s paintings often include images of cups, drawers, utensils, chairs, and tables. These familiar objects are matched with cartoonish fingers and floating eyeballs — macabre images that are as nightmarish as they are goofy. Taken as a whole, Murray’s paintings are abstract compositions rendered in bold colors and multiple layers of paint, but the details of the paintings reveal a fascination with dream states and the psychological underbelly of domestic life. The recipient of many awards, Murray received the Skowhegan Medal in Painting in 1986, the Larry Aldrich Prize in Contemporary Art in 1993, and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award in 1999. Her work is featured in many collections, including Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Elizabeth Murray lived and worked in New York, and died in August 2007.


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Her Story

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Keyhole

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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery: Georges Braque


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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Cubist movement, Georges Braque [French, 1882-1963] Link: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Braque_Georges

Georges Braque (b. 1882, Argenteuil-sur-Seine, France; d. 1963, Paris), was born on May 13, 1882, in Argenteuil-sur-Seine, France. He grew up in Le Havre and studied evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts there from about 1897 to 1899. He left for Paris to study under a master decorator to receive his craftsman certificate in 1901. From 1902 to 1904 he painted at the Académie Humbert in Paris, where he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia. By 1906 Braque’s work was no longer Impressionist but Fauve in style; after spending that summer in Antwerp with Othon Friesz, he showed his Fauve work the following year in the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. His first solo show was at Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler’s gallery in 1908. From 1909 Pablo Picasso and Braque worked together in developing Cubism; by 1911 their styles were extremely similar. In 1912 they started to incorporate collage elements into their paintings and to experiment with the papier collé (pasted paper) technique. Their artistic collaboration lasted until 1914. Braque served in the French army during World War I and was wounded; upon his recovery in 1917 he began a close friendship with Juan Gris.


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Still Life BACH

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Black Fish

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Fishing Boats

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Houses at L’Estaque

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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery: Diego Rivera


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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Social Realist movement, Diego Rivera [Mexican, 1886-1957] Link: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Rivera_Diego

Diego Rivera, born December 8, 1886, in Guanajuato, Mexico, sought to make art that reflected the lives of the Mexican people. Now thought to be one of the leading artists of the twentieth century, Rivera began drawing as a child. He studied art at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts while in his teens and then traveled to Europe to live and work on his art. He had some success as a Cubist painter, but the course of world events would strongly change the style and subject of his work. Inspired by the political ideals of the Mexican Revolution (1914–15) and the Russian Revolution (1917), Rivera wanted to make art that reflected the lives of the working class and native peoples of Mexico.


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Detroit Industry, North Wall

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Flower Festival (Festival de las flores)

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The Flower Carrier

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The Maize Festival (La fiesta del maíz)

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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery: M.C. Escher


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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Op Art movement, M.C. Escher [Dutch, 1898-1972] Link: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Escher_M_C

The Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898–1972) was a draftsman, book illustrator, tapestry designer, and muralist, but his primary work was as a printmaker. Born in Leeuwarden, Holland, the son of a civil engineer, Escher spent most of his childhood in Arnhem. Aspiring to be an architect, Escher enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. While studying there from 1919 to 1922, his emphasis shifted from architecture to drawing and printmaking upon the encouragement of his teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. In 1924 Escher married Jetta Umiker, and the couple settled in Rome to raise a family. They resided in Italy until 1935, when growing political turmoil forced them to move first to Switzerland, then to Belgium. In 1941, with World War II under way and German troops occupying Brussels, Escher returned to Holland and settled in Baarn, where he lived and worked until shortly before his death.


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Three Spheres I

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Three Worlds

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Air and Water I

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Fifth Day of the Creation

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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery: Natalia Gontcharova


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Featured Artist at the e.Gallery this week is a 20th Century artist of the Cubist movement, Natalia Gontcharova [Russian, 1881-1962] Link: http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?dir=Alphabetical/Gontcharova_Natalia

Natalia Sergeevna Gontcharova (Russian: Наталья Сергеевна Гончарова; June 4, 1881 – October 17, 1962) was a prominent Russian avant-garde artist (Cubo-Futurism), painter and costume designer. Her great-aunt was Natalia Pushkina, wife of the poet Alexander Pushkin.


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Rayonism, Blue-Green Forest

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The Cyclist

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Picking Apples

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Pillars of Salt

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